Regular Physical Activity among Female Students: Application of Transtheoretical Model

Sedentary life is one of the most important risk factors to many diseases.Transtheoretical model is one of the models for studing behavior that accounts for people’s readiness to behavior change. This study aimed to investigate the regular physical activity based on transtheoretical model among female high-school students Gorgan city, Iran.
In this cross-sectional study , 414 female students randomly recruited through a two- stage method in 2012 . the questionnaires were stages of change by Marcus et al, Decisional Balance, Self- Efficacy, and Processes of Change by Nigg et al . The data was analyzied by descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-whietny, and logistic regression tests.
Findings:.Of 414 , 46.1% were in precontemplation stage, 5.8% in contemplation,23.7% in preparation, 12.3% in action, and 12.1% in maintanenec stage. The highest effect size was related to behavioral processes. the most powerful effect size was for self-liberation (0.23), stimulus control (0.19), and counter conditioning (0.17), respectively.
Conclussion: The findings indicated that about three-quarters of the students were in the earlier stages of chang and have sedentary life. It seems that some approperiate interventions are needed to move the participants from early stages of physical activity to later stages.